Every time I play I try to play as if it’s the last time I’m ever going to blow.’ If one quote can sum up a musician this one has a great deal to say about Ervin. The passion and urgency of his music is writ large on these four CDs.

His three earliest albums - ‘The Book Cooks’, ‘Cookin'’ and ‘That's It!’ are there complete, together with appearances on recordings led by Teddy Charles, Mal Waldron and Bill Barron. In total there is material from seven albums featured.

Ervin came from Texas and the R and B circuit. He was a Texas tenor and all that implies in the jazz world. Scuffling for a time on $5 a day he came up the hard way. That was his strength and also his weakness because many critics and taste-makers pigeon-holed him and failed to see beyond his origins.

Ervin was conscious of his lack of acceptance. After ‘The Book Cooks’, he experimented with the third stream and ‘Jazz In The Garden At The Museum Art’ was originally issued under vibraphonist Teddy Charles’s name. Mal Waldron’s album The Quest on the fourth CD is almost avant-garde, the pianist features alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy.

‘Uranus’ on CD2 taken very slowly is an impressive ballad performance, with Booker’s characteristic gruff, romanticism. The same quality is heard on ‘Booker’s Blues’ as Ervin soars above George Tucker’s walking slowly bass.

Status Seeking on CD4 has Ervin with Eric Dolphy and Mal Waldron. The bass figures are played by Ron Carter. Eric Dolphy is unrestrained but does not out-do Ervin who is passionate, broad-brush and more obviously appealing.

One additional reason for buying this collection is the notes by Simon Spillett. I have praised Spillett’s writing in the past but he has excelled himself here. Ervin was never given the critical plaudits that he should have received during his life and the literature about him is not easy to find. Spillett in the 51 pages here does not limit himself to the period of the recordings, he covers the life. What you have is a short book about Booker, including his early years in Texas, his time with Prestige, and when he was with Mingus. It is probably the best writing about Ervin anywhere. Spillett endeavours to answer questions about Ervin’s style and whether he can be considered an innovator. Spillett believes, and he argues it convincingly, that Ervin’s defining quality was honesty.

This is a scholarly package. Playing through this CD you start to think about what is the right place for this musician in the jazz hierarchy and why such an important soloist is not widely recognised. He made a serious impact on many of the records that Mingus made at his peak but he was more than that and this selection of his early recordings looks at aspects of his work that were developed later: the passion, the velocity, the unique sound.